Notices by Carly Sagan (carlysagan@mastodon.social)

What in the dYstOpia? "Recruiting Astronomers to wear a head-mounted GoPro and take footage for 7 hours a day to improve AI understanding of manual labor and creative work. Record your astronomy practice, research, or observation routines." This is a job LinkedIn recommended to me today. Are you F*%King serious? This is peak stupid. This must mean the dumb-tech bubble is bursting supernova-style?

I can’t breathe after reading this. Starlink will no longer be dropping SUVs on us. They will be dropping 737s.

The 737-size-dead-satellites are going to be controlled reentries, right? Riiiiggghhttt? Or they’re not going to be disposable, rrrrigghttt?

I don’t see the Starship launch as a “success” at all. An unbelievable amount of pollution went into the ocean. And now eight gargantuan metal rails that were “mock satellites” just for the test are now going to come down uncontrolled somewhere. How long is it going to take for us to see this as insane?

2 tourists died this week in Iceland. One was a little girl. It has been so shocking to see how many tourists die regularly. On my volcano hikes, tons of people brought their very young kids & I witnessed one kid get hurt & need an ambulance. Iceland is not a destination to bring your young kids on extreme adventures. It is dangerous in unexpected ways & I never leave on a nature excursion without emergency supplies. It’s sad to see Iceland getting the blame, it’s the parents to blame

Are people really being hired through Mastodon posts? I feel embarrassed to put my CV on here but I see a lot of people doing it and my workplaces and funds are illegally removing the only women and would appreciate any help finding remote work in STEM
https://ssh25.tiiny.site/
#fedihire #getfedihired

There needs to be a law limiting food prices.
The other day, I was craving this vegan sandwich from this small cafe (basically just a takeout counter) that I hadn’t had in months. For something small like that, I don’t usually pay attention to the price. Turns out, prices went up. My friend was coming over, so I got a sandwich for them and an extra for the next day. When I saw the charge in my bank account, I couldn’t believe it. I actually gasped.
It was over $80 USD for 3 sandwiches.

Volcanoooo!!! A giant lava pool formed right in front of me and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Watching rock come neon-alive is just so absorbing and amazing 🌋

Meant to add something else. There are about 8,000 Starlink satellites above our heads right now and they ALL have to come down in the next few years. And they are coming down sooner than expected, too. At possibly 15 pieces of debris each, that means 120,000 pieces of metal could be raining down on us 🔜
Get your astronaut helmets ready!

@CStamp of course! She is leading this, working on a paper with her on this, too! We both would rather we working on other cool things in astro but someone has to draw attention to this asap before it gets out of hand

Oh and the best part? No one really knows how much shit is going to hit us. Mainly bc SpaceX refuses to release their satellite info. But also bc it is highly complex plasma analysis to even make an estimate. And SpaceX doesn’t seem to even be doing the proper plasma testing at all. Great. It is so scary that I don’t know how I sleep at all

Now, Generation 1 - these are the small guys that they stopped making. These were something like 300 kg. The next gen - Generation 2 - these are 1200 kg. FOUR times more massive. Fucking SUVs. Ok. It gets worse. They wanna put 42,000 of them above our heads. And every fucking billionaire and big corp wants their own constellation, like they all want to become a literal star cluster or something. What in the actual fuck are we doing?

Bottom line: don’t buy space internet. The dangers of this technology and how fast it is developing are WAY beyond the pace of science. Try 4G or 5G. Even if 4G is not great, you can ask your provider for an amplifier box that amplifies the signal. That worked for me. Starlink rant complete. Sorry for the swearing, you can blame the volcano flu.

Why is no one speaking out about this??? Why isn’t Neil deGrasse Tyson or the Sagan family or anyone educating people on this? Oh, bc they are all in cahoots with billionaires & big money. NDT said he was “friends” with Elon, the person taking the stars away from us. Astro ppl are afraid of losing their funds by speaking out. I’m not in cahoots. If anything I’m drowning from all the cahooting.

In a 2024 paper I hadn’t seen before, telescopic observations indicate that a single Generation 1 Starlink satellite generated FIFTEEN pieces of debris after reentry ablation. 15. 15 pieces that could hit the ground and hit us. This is a new level of horror. Do not support Starlink internet under ANY circumstance. This might be the most terrifying result of technology ever in human history - this technology is going to come back and hit us in the face. Literally.

I had a magical moment yesterday when an adorable tiny baby Icelandic horse ran up to me for head pets. I couldn’t believe how soft he was, like bunny fur!

A cosmic thank you and shout out to @sundogplanets for standing up for equality and helping women in physics succeed. I’m having an awful time with an all-male physics faculty and she is one of the few helping. Apparently men don’t like it when women get recognition and awards for solo work that they can’t just slap their man names on. Well, too fricken bad! Women are a creative force that should and shall contribute to physics!

I genuinely don’t know what to do. If there is no funding for space pollution and I’m stuck with all-male departments holding me back, I’m not in the best place to fight. All I can say is, if you are doing science, stop going down rabbit holes. Stop researching fantasy. Stop prioritizing your h-index. We need you to fight for a safe, clean, and healthy planet.

When I view science as under a state of collapse, everything about my scientific career suddenly makes sense. Of course there is no funding for nuanced problems. Of course there are very few opportunities - of which most are canned narratives in which I have zero authority to steer the research. Of course 99% of academics ignore or dismiss my scientific questions. Of course everyone is going down a rabbit hole. We’re not in a golden age of science. We’re on the brink of collapse.

I was reading an article somewhere in which someone with long covid said that they can’t even finish watching a movie.

And I thought, how bad does world decay have to get before entertainment as a career becomes obsolete because we’ve decided as a society that entertainment is just not fucking appropriate anymore?? Or as diseases and fires rage and space debris falls everywhere, will people *really* still be filming and singing???

What is really, really terrifying now is that it simply doesn’t matter how much danger or debris SpaceX makes, E-Mush will get the go ahead to do it again.

He is filling the atmosphere with toxic pollution. So it begs the question - are we sacrificing our entire planet for one man???